A personal exploration of Wiccan spirituality

Day 5: Natural Sacred Energies

Well, don’t I feel the fool. I begged and pleaded with Nat and Jen to start this before I went to Minnesota so that I’d actually do the days while I was up there, and what did I do? NADA. And not a speck for a week after I got back, either.

So I’ve got some maaaajor back pedaling to do. The only think that’s keeping me from being mired in self-loathing is the fact that I’ve done all the days I’ve missed before. So mnah.

I did do one exercise while I was up in Minnesota: The Natural Sacred Energies one. Here’s what I wrote in my journal:

Today Roderick asks us to begin experiencing energy and reminds us that experience is a core of Wicca.

Unlike other religions which ask you to put faith into a cerebral abstract, Wicca challenges you to go out, find, and work with the “energies” out there. Really, it’s an immersion of mind, body, and soul…and the challenge to recognize this things in other animate and inanimate matter.

Roderick quotes Barbara Ardinger of XXXXX who said that “matter is clotted, lumpy spirit, and spirit is finely strained matter.” It is a quote that resonates with me. Sometimes I think that when we allow our matter to get “clotted,” that is where the unhappiness comes from. When we’re divorced from aspects of our body, we don’t do what is healthy for ourselves…and I think it is this self-abuse that leads to our psychic doldrums. Unhappiness. Aloneness. It is unnatural, in its way. So we must actively learn to realign and to be healthy.

Practice: Experiencing Life’s Energy

You can try this exercise from where you are sitting right now. Close your eyes and take several deep, slow breaths. With each exhaled breath, feel your body relax and release all the tensions that it might store. Become internally quiet; try not to allow thinking to interfere with simple breathing and sensation.

If thoughts come up, simply observe them with detached curiosity. Perhaps you might notice how thoughts are creating muscle tensions or contractions in your body. Notice, too, how these tensions transform themselves into your emotions. Try not to get involved in the story line of your thoughts and subsequent tensions–that is a trap that can keep you from the experience of this exercise.

Now, refocus your attention on your solar plexus region (around the lower stomach and navel area). Focus your attention on the feeling of the life force inside your body within this region. Most likely it will feel like a humming, buzzing, or tingling sensation. Now, widen your awareness. Allow your focus to include your chest. Feel the inner body’s energies in the chest and in the solar plexus regions. Now include your hips and legs. Feel the sensation of energy buzzing within this region. Now add your feet into your focused awareness. Now add your arms and hands into the awareness. Finally, add your neck, head, and face into your awareness. You should now be fully aware of your inner life energy from head to toe.

Stay with this feeling for a few minutes. When you sense that you are ready, open your eyes. How did it feel? If you felt “cut off” in any area of experiencing your body, it is important that you continue with this basic energy practice several times a day for 5-10 minutes at a time, until you are able to sense a unification of your body’s energies.

When I tried this exercise for the first time a year ago, I was floored by the energies I felt. This time, however, it was incredibly difficult to obtain that state of “internal quiet,” and once I had grasped a degrre of it, I couldn’t really feel my solar plexus. Indeed, everything from my chest down could have been dead. My head was just buzzing far too much and drowned everything else out.

Now, I know that Roderick is very knowledgeable in chakra work, and I know that several of his exercises–this one included–are rooted in that work.

I personally know very little about chakras. What I do know, however, is that most of the power centers are located along your spine and that a ‘balanced’ person should be able to experience the energies of each. When one or more is “turned off” or closed, the aspects they represent need work. Either that, or the too strong ones need restrained.

Whatever is in my head is drowning out the rest of me. I am out of balance and need to realign.

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About the Project

I'm Melissa Zupan. This blog began in 2008 as a record of my attempt to work through Timothy Roderick's book, "Wicca: A Year and a Day." Since then I joined up with a merry coven of Gardnerian witches and became an initiate in 2013.
The blog is now a fuller record of my life and work in Wicca. Right now, there's no main theme. I just write what I want to write.

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